A Senate panel will hear complaints on Wednesday from nursing home operators, doctors, nurses and pharmacists that a Drug Enforcement Administration narcotics crackdown has left seriously ill patients crying for pain relief.

The state sheriff's association pushed the idea Tuesday, saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people's medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.

In an analysis of six large experiments in which, as usual, depressed patients received either a placebo or an active drug, the true drug effect—that is, in addition to the placebo effect—was "nonexistent to negligible" in patients with mild, moderate, and even severe depression. Only in patients with very severe symptoms (scoring 23 or above on the standard scale) was there a statistically significant drug benefit. Such patients account for about 13 percent of people with depression.

Most sciatica nerve treatments focus only on relieving the pain. It is crucial to alleviate the pain, but one must look at what caused it. The pain may disappear, but the problem remains. How would you like to have a more complete remedy for relief for sciatica? This is an approach that addresses the sciatic pain and its underlying causes.

Desperate transplant patients are being given the lungs of chain smokers because the NHS is so short of organ donations.Surgeons are also being forced to use diseased body parts from cancer sufferers, drug addicts and the very elderly.

Money can't buy you love, happiness or even respect. Cash, however, might provide some relief from pain.

In a series of experiments, people who counted money felt less pain when their hands were dipped into scalding water. The soothing power of cash also helped them shrug off the emotional pain of social exclusion.

For a muscular agency that combats vicious drug criminals, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration acts like a terrified and obstinate toddler when it comes to basic science. For years, the DEA and the National Institute for Drug Abuse have made it all but impossible to develop a robust body of research on the medical uses of marijuana.

Federal authorities have arrested a New York Police Department officer on charges he helped a crew of bandits rob drug dealers.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn alleged Thursday that Emmanuel Tavarez supplied the crew with NYPD raid jackets, bulletproof vests, handcuffs and badges so they could impersonate police officers during staged raids on drug dens in Queens and elsewhere.

They say he also acted as a lookout during armed holdups that netted hundreds of kilograms of cocaine.